I like the poll option: "Yes, but it would take two resets"....Umm, I'm not sure he knows what yes means...since the question was, would they kill it in one reset.

As for the topic at hand, first off, there's the hilarious amount of people acting like mankind has advanced so far in 5 years, that we were all shells of our present selves 5 years ago. As a few people with common sense have said...gaming skill didn't magically increase because WoW made bosses that do more things. The best players then are absolutely as good as the best players now. Very few people only play WoW. Most of the best players bring skills learned across many games, not just their one experience of that time they did UBRS with 15 people.

As for Sunwell itself, yes, for the most part, movement was relatively limited (and generally speaking a bad idea - minus a few select abilities: Felmyst Deep Breath, Twins Conflag, Kil'Jaeden Darkness, etc). However, what made Sunwell hard was the timing, execution and, truthfully speaking, gear. I cleared Sunwell after the M'uru pushback nerf, but before Kil'jaeden's Darkness/Fire Bloom combo nerf. I played a paladin and was asked to play all three specs at one time or another throughout the raid (I played Holy on all 6 fights, Ret on all 6 fights and Prot on Felmyst, M'uru and Kil'Jaeden). I like how some people say there wasn't theorycrafting back then...for one example: there was a HUGE amount of discussion on which ranks of spells to use for healers to maximize your heals while limiting your mana spent.

We also tested the bosses on the PTR (and every notable guild did). I had friends in most of the best US guilds at the time. The PTR was my favorite time because while we were all testing the bosses, we got to enjoy chatting with friends that we rarely got to talk with (since there were no REAL ID or Battletags back then). We would discuss mechanics, progression and specifically, the Sunwell patch also introduced the ability to link icons in chat, so sometimes people would crash the MT or a key healer because it was kind of funny to link like 100 icons all in one message. Not only did theorycrafting and testing exist, we also took the time to discuss it with our competitors. Did we share every strategy? No. But we did openly discuss things.

One other thing to note, Blood Legion has always been a very good guild. They also had the most complete sets of Warglaives in the world at the time of Sunwell's release (I could be wrong, but I believe it was 4 completed sets - looking at their kill screenshot, it might have been only 3, and like several more of the OH - they also were the first guild in the world with a completed set). Not surprisingly, they had the world first kill of Brutallus (and they actually hit the enrage). Even with their army of Warglaives, it wasn't enough. And as someone said before, the only guild that killed M'uru with the pushback had 5 weeks of Sunwell gearing (2 of which included the Twins). It wasn't because Blood Legion was a bad guild with bad players or undergeared or that they lacked knowledge. M'uru was just that tough.

I highly doubt if you opened Sunwell with no Sunwell gear given out, even with 3 sets of Warglaives in the raid, that any guild would just waltz through it in a week. As I mentioned above, part was execution, part was timing, but the third part was gear. And without the gear, I just don't think it's likely. Possible? Sure, anything is possible. But even if someone pulled it off, the term "guilds of today" makes me automatically say no. A couple guilds might be able to, more than that? I'd seriously doubt it. Most people in this thread probably never pulled M'uru before any of his nerfs.

You people don't have the slightest clue as to how tightly tuned M'uru 1.0 was.

I don't know where that guy got the 45 hours worth of progression for SK to down it...but keep in mind they were the only guild in the world to do so. On top of that, they had more than a month's worth of Sunwell farm gear due to gating. Like I mentioned before, Kalecgos, Felmyst, and Brutallus were dead five weeks prior to M'uru...and the Twins were dead two or three weeks prior to the release of M'uru. That is a lot of gear, ladies and gentlemen.

The skill difference between SK of old and Method / Blood Legion / Paragon of today is minimal, especially on a raw throughput fight like M'uru. They still would stack resto shaman, everyone would be a LWer (if you don't know why, don't be posting in this thread), and they would NOT kill M'uru 1.0 without a miraculous amount of Warglaives (even then, I'm not sure if it could be done with 6 rogues in the raid, even if they all had glaives). It would have been mathematically impossible without the extra Sunwell gear.

Last edited by Toxigen; 2013-03-25 at 01:27 PM.

"There are two types of guys in this world. Guys who sniff their fingers after scratching their balls, and dirty fucking liars." -StylesClashv3

Originally Posted by Kalis

Not finding-a-cock-on-your-girlfriend-is-normal level of odd, but nevertheless, still odd.

Funny, I think I've heard this one before. Anyway, because of your claim I'm inclined to assume you've actually done the math on the matter to come to this conclusion. But why aren't you posting your calculations as proof? I think that would be much more impressive than using text effects, aggressive tone and filler words, now it really only looks like you have a baseless opinion and want very hard for people to believe you, which doesn't really do justice to the mathematical proof I'm sure you have lying around.

it always seemed to me prenerf Ragnaros HC was a lot harder the M'ure . but i never did any of those encounters prenerf so i cant say.
but considering people downed rag hc pretty quick, i assume they could easily do SWP in 1-2 weeks.

You people don't have the slightest clue as to how tightly tuned M'uru 1.0 was.

I don't know where that guy got the 45 hours worth of progression for SK to down it...but keep in mind they were the only guild in the world to do so. On top of that, they had more than a month's worth of Sunwell farm gear due to gating. Like I mentioned before, Kalecgos, Felmyst, and Brutallus were dead five weeks prior to M'uru...and the Twins were dead two or three weeks prior to the release of M'uru. That is a lot of gear, ladies and gentlemen.

The skill difference between SK of old and Method / Blood Legion / Paragon of today is minimal, especially on a raw throughput fight like M'uru. They still would stack resto shaman, everyone would be a LWer (if you don't know why, don't be posting in this thread), and they would NOT kill M'uru 1.0 without a miraculous amount of Warglaives (even then, I'm not sure if it could be done with 6 rogues in the raid, even if they all had glaives). It would have been mathematically impossible without the extra Sunwell gear.

I dunno, I raided in Sunwell and I raid today, in the same guild. My guild is much, much better now than it was then, both in terms of rank and quality of players. Those individuals who have stuck it out the whole time have improved (as anyone will improve playing a video game for years on end), we know more about the game now, we pick up on and improvise strats better now than ever before. We cleared Sunwell back then but it took a long time, I think we'd clear it pretty fast if it came out now.

I just don't think it matters because it's a different game. The difficulty comes from a different place. There was no fight in Sunwell which required the coordination and group execution that heroic Dark Animus does. Not even close. Kil'jaeden for example was "go to your assigned place, stack now... spread fast, kill these adds, dodge this meteor"... mechanically it wasn't easy but it was definitely a lot less complex than the heroic ToT fights. M'uru was pretty simple but tuned incredibly tightly and a slight mistake would wipe you. They were hard fights because mistakes were punished harshly, tanks died instantly if they weren't healed, dps checks were very tight etc. Overall it was easier but the game has changed and evolved so using "guilds would clear Sunwell in a week if it came out today" as an argument doesn't mean Sunwell wasn't a great/challenging/memorable zone.

That said I feel like anyone who raided at a high level during Sunwell and still raids at a high level now would agree that fights today are overall more difficult and Sunwell wouldn't present a huge challenge if it came out unchanged today.

I'll give you the part about more time spent raiding, but it's a hard sell to say competitive raiders today are any more skilled than competitive raiders just five years ago. By saying so, you're essentially implying that competitive gamers today are better than competitive gamers 5 years ago, which makes no sense.

Skill is largely a function of time and effort put into something. WoW raiders today put in a lot more time and effort than happened 5 years ago. Added to that, they have 5 years more experience.

The thing is now we have Normal than Heroic mode (same bosses with little tact upgrades), also we have coins for extra loot, 522 VP gear available from day one, gearing up on normal etc. In Vanilla/TBC we were going straight to "heroic" raids. If we'd give today's top guilds previous conditions it would proly take longer than back in the days. But in current contitions - Sunwell first coming out as Normal, additional VP gear and than next week Sunwell Hc (which was regular one back in the days), ofc they would clear it. Imo spliting raid to normal/hc, giving people VP gear and LFR was biggest mistake Blizzard ever made. Best model was 5m Hc's + 10/25 man without shared lockout, unfortunetley it was used to kill spirit of Naxxramas thats why many people dont consider it good.

That said I feel like anyone who raided at a high level during Sunwell and still raids at a high level now would agree that fights today are overall more difficult and Sunwell wouldn't present a huge challenge if it came out unchanged today.

I agree with you 100%. The encounters today are far more complex and for the most part more enjoyable. All I'm saying is M'uru was essentially a raw throughput / execution fight (in all 3 aspects of damage, healing, AND threat) that would be arguably impossible with only BT / Hyjal gear.

In this sort of case...what experience / skills relevant to M'uru do the new World First chasing guilds have that SK did not? My thought is not much...they knew how to min/max back then...just take a look at their raid comp:

Group 1 is 3 BM hunters (remember the pet crit damage buff stacked) on one side of the room grouped with one of the prot tanks. I always found that rather funny for some reason...he must not have been able to hold aggro off that mage.

@ manni: clearly I'm not the first to bust out ye olde "mathematically impossible" statement. Additionally, I'm not sure where you get the aggressive tone and filler words accusation from. Either way, I find it ironic since I've read some of your garbage on the DOTA 2 thread. But c'mon, do you honestly think it would have been possible without a month's worth of gear from the first three and two weeks worth of gear from Twins? Base it on having 2 rogues w/ sets of glaives.

edit: let's just find someone with a lot of disposable income to host a M'uru 1.0 patched server and pay some top guilds to take stabs at it. They get 2 sets of Warglaives and any BT / Hyjal loot they want.

Last edited by Toxigen; 2013-03-25 at 02:09 PM.

"There are two types of guys in this world. Guys who sniff their fingers after scratching their balls, and dirty fucking liars." -StylesClashv3

Originally Posted by Kalis

Not finding-a-cock-on-your-girlfriend-is-normal level of odd, but nevertheless, still odd.

I agree with you 100%. The encounters today are far more complex and for the most part more enjoyable.

Eh, that's not totally true. BT and Sunwell had some fights as interesting as the ones in Throne. You can't just say because it's old content that it was any less complex.

Originally Posted by Toxigen

Group 1 is 3 BM hunters (remember the pet crit damage buff stacked) on one side of the room grouped with one of the prot tanks. I always found that rather funny for some reason...he must not have been able to hold aggro off that mage.

As a BM hunter in Sunwell, the reason we were brought was because we were top DPS besides rogues with glaives. I don't remember anything about stacking debuffs, but Ravager and Lightning Serpent were the best, mostly Ravager as it didn't eat Shaman nature debuffs like the Serpent. Ravager did Gore and Bite, neither had a debuff as far as I can remember.

The rest of the comp makes sense for the encounter, and any guild trying to kill him at any point was probably doing the same. Hunters/Rogues were just the best DPS at the time, Warlocks were needed to AoE down the void adds, Shamans gave bloodlust with no sated and Resto was just a beast with chain heal. Shadow priests for mana regen. It's all pretty standard for a guild pushing progression at the end of Sunwell.

@ manni: clearly I'm not the first to bust out ye olde "mathematically impossible" statement. Additionally, I'm not sure where you get the aggressive tone and filler words accusation from. Either way, I find it ironic since I've read some of your garbage on the DOTA 2 thread. But c'mon, do you honestly think it would have been possible without a month's worth of gear from the first three and two weeks worth of gear from Twins? Base it on having 2 rogues w/ sets of glaives.

It doesn't really matter what I think, I just don't appreciate people pretending to have proof or knowledge of things they in reality seem to be quite ignorant of, which is why I sometimes point out inconsistencies in the argumentation of such posts. I tend to avoid that pitfall myself, but if you think my posts are garbage then you're of course free to do so.

If you actually care what I think, then to me it seems like this discussion gravitates towards discussing whether what OP asks is possible in terms of ability rather than gear, though OP made no mention if gear should be considered a factor or not. You seem to put much weight on the matter of gear, but did you stop to consider how differently guilds of today would have approached the content if TBC came out today? Even if Glaives were a random drop, I know the Paragon I played in wouldn't have even considered farming BT and MH with less than 3 raids to maximize the amount of Glaive drops and to ensure they've a high amount of fully geared characters of every class ready for the next raid.

I think that sentence is probably the most important part of the entire thread - no joke. I mean, it's just laughable reading about "people being terrible back then", some supposed huge skill gap, fight being absolutely trivial and high end guilds being pretty much casual by today's standard. It's just... wow. So much misconceptions about the TBC days here.

Fun fact - do people know that Armory and WoL were actually introduced in TBC? Sure, it was called WWS (I think?) back then, but it existed - and it was used. Raiders of old weren't idiots that suddenly became geniuses throughout WotLK. Hardcore raiders of today have multiple raid ready alts? Back then, they were busy farming Flame Caps and Demonslaying Elixirs - not to mention agility scrolls.

I'm rather doubtful clearing Sunwell would be nearly as trivial as some people believe. There would be no normal mode to farm with 5 different groups for entire week. Try removing ~10 ilvl from current top guilds to simulate that and suddenly 12/13 becomes much harder.

Edit : Of course, it would still be easier than it used to be, since multi group farming of pre-Sunwell would be perfectly doable. The only real question is Mu'ru. Was he "mathematically possible" without Sunwell gear and how many Glaives you needed for that

Eh, that's not totally true. BT and Sunwell had some fights as interesting as the ones in Throne. You can't just say because it's old content that it was any less complex.

Ravager did Gore and Bite, neither had a debuff as far as I can remember.

Oh, don't get me wrong...I absolutely loved raiding throughout TBC. However, even TBC's hardest encounter (M'uru) was more of a numbers game than anything. Most players in P1 were standing still, some had to multi-target (big deal), one had to time Mass Dispels correctly (I was the Spriest doing it for my guild, wasn't that hard...just high pressure), and one had to collect adds (prot pally). P2 was just clutch purges and maxing throughput.

What I was talking about in regards to the hunters is Ferocious Inspiration stacking...from what I remember the group-wide 3% dmg buff proc'd when your pet crit...you could have a group of 5 BM Hunters all doing 15% more damage if you wanted.

If you actually care what I think, then to me it seems like this discussion gravitates towards discussing whether what OP asks is possible in terms of ability rather than gear, though OP made no mention if gear should be considered a factor or not.

OK, so let's take the most literal approach. If all of the top guilds traveled back in time and went through Sunwell exactly the way it went in the original release with the gating...then yes, there would be multiple guilds that would have beaten SK's World First...both in fewer total attempts and time taken to down it. I'm not arguing at all that today's guilds have more dedication...which is purely a by-product of the World First Race having larger recognition / greater importance...thus more competition for it. I don't have a doubt in my mind that guilds today would have 4-5 BT clears per week for Warglaives. I suppose if they did a melee group for each side that consisted of a prot warrior, enhance shaman, and 3 rogues all w/ glaives...that might trivialize the fight (even though the adds aren't demons...it could make P2 a joke).

My argument was against all these people saying "cleared in first week, ez pz" type nonsense. I was there...I had the pleasure of bashing my head against 1.0 M'uru (albeit only for two nights worth of progression...then the pushback nerf came and we still struggled for a while). That fight in its original form was an absolute ball-buster. Certainly not on the same level as say, Firelands Ragnaros, but I think there is a clear possibility the fight would have been bordering (if not absolutely) impossible with only one round of loot from the first four bosses and a typical amount (2) of warglaive sets.

Ultimately, what I mean by that is M'uru wouldn't go down faster / easier because the players are more skilled, but rather they have become more inventive and dedicated to acquiring the most amount of gear in the fastest way possible.

Last edited by Toxigen; 2013-03-25 at 03:45 PM.

"There are two types of guys in this world. Guys who sniff their fingers after scratching their balls, and dirty fucking liars." -StylesClashv3

Originally Posted by Kalis

Not finding-a-cock-on-your-girlfriend-is-normal level of odd, but nevertheless, still odd.

Skill is largely a function of time and effort put into something. WoW raiders today put in a lot more time and effort than happened 5 years ago. Added to that, they have 5 years more experience.

Yes, the World First guilds spend more time raiding today than they did back in TBC or Classic, but at the end of the day they just spend as much time raiding as is required to compete. Every time a guild has taken it a step further, they've had competitors who are ready to match them step for step. TBC and Classic were no different to MOP as far as this goes. It's just that over time, more and more steps have been taken. Today's top raiding guilds could not have existed in TBC's raiding environment, simply because they'd have skipped too many steps along the way, but if they could have, their competitors would have taken all the same measures to compete. That's what competitive gaming is all about.

If you are going to take one of today's top guilds and put it into a scenario where they are raiding in TBC, then you also must take their main competitors from this same era and assume they'd match them step for step as far as time consumption goes. If you don't, then you're making for one incredibly skewed comparison whose sole purpose is to flatter today's top guilds.

As far as the topic goes, pointing out the extra time today's top guilds spend raiding, and how it lets them funnel gear, have access to multiple well geared alts and so on, is completely valid, while pointing out some great leaps in personal skill levels is not.